HotSpot Episode 5: Robo Cloud

Green Peak’s[2] Open Smart Home Framework is an integrated networking architecture for ZigBee-base Smart Home applications. The framework connects the ZigBee network to the Internet by allowing a single ZigBee radio device to master a complete sense and control network at a low cost of implementation.

Rapyuta[3] allows robots’ data-processing functions to be performed in the cloud, helping to decrease the amount of onboard computational hardware in the bots. The environments of different robots can be linked together, allowing them to not only work as a team, but to learn how to perform new tasks from one another as well.

Kidtrack, a biometric system developed by Fujitsu Frontech[4] and IT/Logistics[5] that helps parents keep track of their children who take the bus to school. When kids board or depart the bus, a PalmSecure reader scans their palms to capture an image of their vein pattern, which is then cross-referenced to a secure database of pre-registered users’ patterns, allowing parents to know when and where their kids are getting on and off the bus from.

A tiny implant developed by EPFL[6] scientists, which allows blood to be analyzed from within the body, with results then transmitted wirelessly to a computer. This tiny lab is 14 mm long and features five sensors, a radio transmitter, a power delivery system, and a tiny electrical coil that receives power inductively from a patch outside of the body.